Hyderabad, December 16: Telugu Desam party’s floor leader in the Legislative Council Dadi Virabhadra Rao has urged his partymen not to force a vertical split in the party amidst agitations for and against division of the State.
Speaking to mediapersons here today, he said that the division of state was against the ambitions of party’s founder NT Rama Rao. Since Telugu Desam party was a regional entity, it could not survive if it was split, Virabhadra Rao noted.
He said that it was not proper to urge party president N Chandrababu Naidu to appoint a separate committee for Telangana and threaten to float `Telangana Telugu Desam’ if their demand was not accepted.
He said that he had met Chief Minister K Rosaiah along with Council Chairman A Chakrapani and discussed the present crisis in the State. Rao said he had urged Rosaiah to see that the present crisis did not lead to a constitutional crisis and he should convey the ground realities in the State to the Central Government.
The chief minister said that the government would take the sentiments of the people of the three regions into consideration before arriving at a final decision on division of the State, the TDP leader said.
Quoting Rosaiah, Rao said that the Centre might have taken the decision to mitigate the tensions in the Telangana region with Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao on fast-unto-death.
Wanting to know whether the statement made by Union Home Minister P Chidambaram was of the government or of the Congress Core Committee, Rao said that if it was government’s it should have been discussed by the Union Cabinet. “It appears that since the Centre did not ask for adoption of a resolution in favour of Telangana in the Assembly, the decision was made only by the Congress Core Committee and not by the government,’’ he said.
The manner in which the decision was announced had created confusion in the State and chaos, and students were becoming scapegoats, he regretted.
He wanted that a consensus be arrived at before introducing a resolution in the House. “When there were demands for creation of 11 States in the country, why did the Centre act with alacrity in the case of Telangana alone?’’ Virabhadra Rao asked.
–Agencies